Previous Chapter: The Pursued Meet Their Pursuers
The Shimmering Isles
“You look absolutely stunning,” said Ambierce, leaning against a pillar entangled with ivy. The sun was high above, and the Galvanian heat was at its zenith, yet the overgrown garden offered cool shade and a respite from the thick humidity. A little fountain bubbled water from an underground spring, creating a pleasant ambiance, although one could no longer tell what sort of creature the fountain depicted, so worn and eroded was the bronze. If Cassilda had to guess, she would have thought it to be a dragon, for that would fit the theme of the manor, but she had a feeling that the fountain predated the previous owner and his obsession.
“Thank you,” she replied, twirling once. The dress was black, lacy, and rather modest, but she took his compliment sincerely, as he had meant it.
“This is your coming out party. You will dazzle the other magicians and render them speechless, which will be quite an accomplishment, I assure you. There is nothing a magician loves more than the sound of his own voice, especially when that voice is pontificating loudly.”
“I will be dull, and no one will speak to me,” she said.
“Nonsense. I guarantee they will speak to you. They will wish to know how such a beautiful young lady became the protegee of Ambierce Serpico, and they will insinuate all sorts of vile things behind the thin veneer of a smile, and you will shake your head and dispel their vulgar notions with a laugh and a flash of your emerald eyes.”
“Will they test my knowledge? Will they ask me to prove my worth?”
“Perhaps. You don’t have to do anything for them, but they may wish to know if you are more than a pretty face.”
“I don’t have a license…”
“You don’t need one as an apprentice, and when your training is complete, we will apply using the proper channels. My name has some weight in this country, my dear. The Baron still sends me a vintage from the Okanagan Valley every new year. So don’t worry about the Conventum. No one at the party gives a damn about them. Frankly, most reasonable magicians think them a joke.”
“But why must I attend this party? Social functions make me nervous. I don’t know how to talk to people.”
“That’s why you must go. Being shy never aided anyone in life, Cassilda, and you may think me to be a hypocrite, for I am, admittedly, somewhat of a recluse, but it was not always so, and I would not have all that you enjoy,” he gestured at the overgrown garden, “if I could not charm people when the situation demanded it. Besides, a magician must know her fellows. No one ever achieved anything without a little help from friends.”
“You don’t have any friends!”
“Not true, not true. I have friends everywhere. They never come to visit, but that’s because they know I’m a recluse, and they don’t wish to offend my delicate sensibilities. Plus, I drink too much, and say what I think, and tire of their company too quickly. Also, you may be disturbed to discover that I have something of a reputation.”
“But what should we ride in? The carriage is missing a wheel, and I’m unsure what happened to your horses.”
Ambierce smiled one of his enormous grins. He clicked his tongue three times and snapped his fingers, and a fluttering was heard, as though an enormous bat were making an approach. A monstrous creature landed right in the middle of the garden and stared at them with compound eyes. Its head was huge and shaggy, and its wings folded into curved leathery protrusions.
“A mollossus,” said Ambierce proudly, “with functioning wings and a domestic disposition. Look at that saddle. Beautiful handiwork, eh? Very few people ever get the chance to fly such a creature. We shall truly be arriving in style!”
“We are supposed to fly in the air on the back of that thing?” asked Cassilda, terror forming in her eyes. “Ambierce, I can smell it from here.”
“The beast has a certain… musk about it which is unavoidable, I’m afraid. Fortunately, I know many spells for banishing odors from my army days. Go ahead, my lady. Mount the mollosus.”
Cassilda frowned at his choice of words but stepped forward. The animal made a deep sound in its chest like the purring of a thousand cats. With a tentative hand, she grasped the pommel and swung her leg over the creature. Ambierce hopped behind her and clicked his tongue once. The mollossus leapt into the air, throwing her back in the saddle, causing the girl to wrap her arms around its neck and hold on for dear life. Behind her, she could hear Ambierce laughing and a terrible anger rose up briefly in her and vanished just as quickly as she looked upon the world rushing below. There was Farmer Argot’s orchards, so neatly arranged like little model trees! And there was the feed store, and the pub, and little people scurrying about like ants, so small, so tiny when viewed high above! Even the reek of the beast didn’t mitigate her joy. She looked once back at Ambierce and saw him watching her calmly, with only a trace of his smile remaining, and she realized that he knew her very well, perhaps better than she knew herself.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She looked for the man, but he was gone. Someone’s having a laugh at my expense she told herself. Regaining her composure, she smiled and tried to explain the scream.
“I saw a spider,” Cassilda said. She felt stupid as she said it.
“You’re not afraid of spiders,” replied Ambierce.
“But you are afraid of the water. Of drowning, sinking helplessly beneath the waves while others look onward, unwilling to come to your aid.”
The middle-aged man was by Ambierce’s side, staring at him with the same hostile gaze that he’d fixed on Cassilda. Up close, she could feel his energy just as she had felt that of the young mage’s, yet where his aura had been pleasing, the stranger’s was sickening. Her stomach lurched, and she had to fight the urge to vomit. Looking at Ambierce, she could tell he was experiencing the same revulsion. Who is this man and what is wrong with him she wondered.
“Wasn’t expecting to see me, were you, old friend? Not after Valice. I still recall your protestations, your petty excuses citing our lack of authority. You questioned the loss of life, the environmental damage. It would be a blight on the consciences of wizards everywhere, I believe you said. Of course, you were right. They made the Conventum neuter our future in response to what we did in Valice. Which is why I’m surprised to discover this pleasant young thing in your company, Ambierce. I tell you, the Conventum will never grant her a license. Either you are getting her hopes up for nothing, or you are training a sorceress. He hasn’t been honest with you, has he, pretty young thing?”
The stranger reached out a hand to touch her, but Ambierce shoved him aside, hard enough that he stumbled and fell to the ground. Everyone around them stopped speaking and watched. The stranger lay on the ground and smiled up at his attacker, beckoning towards him, welcoming the onset of fists and kicks.
“I won’t give you the pleasure,” said Ambierce. “You’re worse than refuse, Pentos. You’re a cancer.”
“Hear him insult me! Oh the hypocrisy! He went along with the spell as we all did, and he’s guilty by association. Yet everyone blames Zakariyah Pentos for the Calamity. All the wizards involved shrugged off the guilt and put it on Zakariyah Pentos, boogeyman, specter, devil incarnate! Isn’t that just like man to make up devils when it’s mankind who is evil, base, and stupid?”
“To hell with you!” screamed Ambierce. He came at Pentos, eyes smoldering, and thunder suddenly echoed through the halls, loud enough to rattle bones. Two mages grabbed his arms and restrained him; Madame Brodeur appeared and held out her hand.
“Ambierce, what is wrong with you? Major spells are forbidden in these halls. Who are you screaming at? Are you ill?”
Ambierce looked astonished. Where the man had been, there was no one. At the time, Cassilda didn’t understand why Pentos couldn’t have cast an invisibility spell, but she later learned that such magics did not render the caster invisible to the eyes of another wizard.
They left the party soon after, embarrassed, confused, and disturbed.
…
Cassilda stirred from the recollection and yawned. She was tired and depressed, still grieving for Josun, still burnt out from her exertions during the escape from Beaune. The cabin of the airship was small, cold, and utterly lacking privacy. Fergal and the Thief mulled about, staring out of windows at the passing scenery, while Callimachus busied herself with instruments, futilely trying to chart their position. The sorceress looked down at the sea and knew where they were heading. The zeppelin, it turned out, had a damaged stabilizer, and was unable to turn north with any consistency. No matter how Callimachus steered them, the airship inevitably continued south-east.
“Blast it, I can’t fix it!” complained the Professor, slumping in the captain’s chair. “We need to land so that I can work on the stabilizer, yet there is nothing but water for all the eye can see.”
“It is terrifying to see nothing but water beneath you. I miss the trees and their canopy, the darkness of the thicket, and the chorus of the insects at night,” said Fergal. “Why was I forced to come along on this journey?”
“We were all tricked, yes, even you, Professor, yet there’s no use complaining about it now,” said the Thief. “It is useless to argue with fate. I wish I were in the arms of a plump woman of low standing, with a half-full bottle of wine at my feet, and the warmth of a hearth at my back, yet fate has kept me with the sorceress, who desires the heart beating at my breast, and I know now that no promise of gold will end my quest, for the witch’s desires are my own.”
He took the Heart from his coat pocket and held it in his hands like a supplicant, and they all watched with wonder the gleaming organ pulsate.
“My, is that artificial?” asked Callimachus. “It looks as though it is flesh. Have you had that in your pocket all this time?”
“Look down there. Land,” said Cassilda, pointing out the window.
They saw an island in the restless sea. A great peak rose out of the mist like the bony finger of a giant protruding from the depths. As they approached, they saw a rocky shore littered with the broken wrecks of dozens of ships. A piercing wail cut through the fog and a flock of birds scattered past the zeppelin, nearly flying through the windows. Despite the ominous mood, Callimachus began lowering the vessel, aiming for a section of beach that looked clear. They were all quite astonished when they cleared the mist and discovered a port town lying below them. There were figures standing on the docks, staring at the zeppelin as it sank towards the beach, and they remained standing in place like statues as the airship landed and Callimachus threw the ladder down.
“There are no towers to tie off to, and I have no knowledge of the local lords,” said Callimachus. “How will I be sure that they will not ransack my airship?”
“They don’t look too eager to move at the moment,” replied the Thief. “Likely they have never seen such a marvel and think it to be the product of high sorcery. You probably have nothing to worry about.”
“What was the terrible shrieking we heard on approach? Perhaps I should stay here,” said Fergal.
“Come Fergal, you will be much safer with us. I think I know where we are,” said Cassilda.
“Pray tell, where are we?” asked the Professor.
“The Shimmering Isles. The Land of the Dead.”
They sauntered down the beach and climbed up on the docks, which were rotten and missing many wooden planks. They did not look closely at the immobile figures standing on petrified posts; instinct told them to ignore these entities, who seemed lifeless. A decrepit shack stood behind the wharf, and with a little hesitation, they passed through its swinging doors. There were few patrons in the dimly-lit place, and some were as catatonic as the sentries outside, their bony hands gripped around their beer mugs as though they had been frozen for centuries. An ancient pirate stood behind the bar, his head leaning on his fist, a tricorn hat covering his face. Upon his faded blue jacket, a small lizard slept, its head nestled under its wings.
“Fergal, go order a beer,” said the Thief, slapping him on the back.
“Shussh! Everyone in here is either dead or close to it. I do not wish to wake anyone that shouldn’t be awoken.”
“These people are likely suffering from the effects of a terrible plague,” explained the Professor. “We probably should be covering our mouths. I will see if the barman is lucid.”
She approached, stepping softly as though she were creeping through the lair of several hibernating bears. The bar surface was littered with broken mugs and dust. On the mantel a shark’s jaws hung, its triangular teeth as large as a man’s hand. Callimachus cleared her throat and hoped that the barman would stir. He did not.
“Excuse me, bar master?” she asked quietly. The lizard on his shoulder twitched, but neither figure moved further.
“Slap his arm,” whispered the Thief. Callimachus glared back at him, but she bent forward and gingerly touched the barman’s arm. This time the lizard drew back its wings and blinked its black eyes. The reptile surveyed them silently, its forked tongue darting out every so often, and Callimachus had the impression that it was intelligent as well as unfriendly, so she did not extend her hand again, for fear of being bitten.
“Sir? May I ask you a question?” she said, a little louder than before. The lizard hissed through teeth, and Callimachus stepped back.
“Are you dead or not?” yelled the Thief. The barman woke with a shudder, dust flying off his blue jacket. The lizard leapt off his shoulder and swept over their heads and went out the door. Callimachus was about to mutter an apology when her voice died in her throat. The barman’s face was shriveled as though he’d been mummified, and his skin was a dead, purplish-black color. Between desiccated lips, a few golden teeth remained. There were no eyeballs in his skull’s sockets, yet there was a strange, reddish light glowing within, as though two faint candles were burning.
“Ehh?” he asked in a rough tenor. The breath that came from his mouth reeked of mold and putrefaction.
“So, so sorry,” mumbled Callimachus, tripping over a bar stool, prompting the Thief to catch her before she fell.
“Foreigners, I see. We haven’t had any in a while, not since the last shipwreck. That might have been fifty years ago, I don’t know. The way my tongue feels, I think it might have been a hundred.”
The barman bent down, groaned, and removed a bottle from beneath the counter. He knocked off all the broken glasses from the bar surface and took four intact glasses and halfheartedly polished them with a mold-spotted rag that he produced from a coat pocket. Nodding at the company, he uncorked the bottle and poured each of them a drink, after which he threw back his head and drained the bottle, greedily swallowing the liquid. When he slammed the bottle down on the bar, his face looked a little fresher and the light in his eyes brightened.
“What, are you afraid of me? Nobody comes here by accident. Maybe an ill-wind pushed your vessel against the rocks, yet I assure you that nobody comes to the Land of the Dead who is not meant to come. In days of old, heroes would land on these shores to venture to the Underworld. Some wished to raise the dead. Others wanted to find a cure for the Corruption. There were a few who had enough courage to face the winged terror that lives in the Emerald City. Hah, more than a few. None of them ever returned, not that I can remember. Many of us abandoned our quests and set up shop and tried to continue the best we could. We are all stricken, you see. The Corruption roams this land, for the Corruption is death, and death will claim everything, even heroes and gods. You best all come here and have yourselves a drink. It will put off the sickness for a while, and you won’t find yourself becoming a walking corpse.”
The barman looked at him for a while and then smiled a nearly toothless grin.
“What do you think? Ambrosia? Nectar? Hah, it’s vintage swill, you little fool, made in a galley two-hundred years ago and still just as full of fire as it was back in those days. Booze keeps the Corruption at bay.”
They all had a drink. Callimachus could not stop staring at the ghoulish bartender, though she looked away whenever he turned his attention towards her. Cassilda sipped the drink and brooded. The Thief felt the Heart beat mightily against his chest.
“We need to enter the Underworld,” said the sorceress quietly. She placed her glass back on the bar and looked at the bartender.
“Of course you do, miss. Why else would you be here? You won’t turn back so early, no, I can tell from looking at you that you’re a driven woman, one whose soul is full of life and vigor. Every day you spend here, you’ll feel it slithering out of you, the fire that burns in your heart, Rankar’s Gift. I don’t have much left inside. Another year or two and I’ll be like those fellows on the dock. The madness hasn’t taken them yet. Someone ought to hack them to pieces before they become dangerous.”
“It is not our fate to become Lilu,” said Cassilda. “How do I get to the Underworld?”
“Well you could try to find it yourselves,” replied the barman, fiddling underneath the bar for another bottle, “but I would recommend a guide, for these isles are full of things that one would not wish to meet, though it don’t matter much if you’re going to the Underworld, because there are worse things down there.”
“What kinds of things?” asked Fergal.
“Dead things. Things that shouldn’t be and yet are. Demons, monsters, and creatures without names. Archaea is where Rankar fell when he died, and his fall opened a hole between worlds. Those that prowl the Emerald City are incomprehensible. Your mind will break if you see them, and if it doesn’t, you’ll wish it had.”
“Where do we hire a guide?” asked Cassilda, her face stolid.
“You can hire one from me if you have the right currency,” said the barman.
“What do you need of money?” asked the sorceress.
“Money is useless to me. Booze is not. Youthful flesh is also something we wish to enjoy, for obvious reasons.”
He leered at them all and reached out a bony hand.
“Come, take it. Preferably one of the women, but I’m not picky at this point. Let me feel your flesh for a half hour, no more, and I’ll find you a guide to take you to the Underworld.”
“I have a bottle of spiced Zanj rum under my workbench,” said Callimachus, the look of disgust plain on her face. “Fergal, if you would be so kind as to fetch it…”
“Would it be so terrible to let me touch your flesh, my dear? I am a thing clinging to life just like you. These hands were once as firm, strong, and smooth as your own; once my mouth had a full set of teeth, and there were eyes in the sockets of my skull. If I offer you a graveyard kiss, who are you to brush it away? You will be like me someday, a festering mass of decaying flesh and petrified bone, and when the earth calls to you, what will you say to it? The flame is a tremulous, fragile spirit. It burns bright in youth and dims to almost nothing in old age. I keep the embers stoked, and I ask that you help me as you would any man lying broken in a ditch, begging for mercy. Come with me to the corner here and let your youth soak from your skin…”
“There’s also this flask of Beaune brandy I’m prepared to offer you,” said Callimachus, slamming the bottle down in front of the barman. She turned to Cassilda, and as their eyes locked there was an emotional exchange that was difficult to define, although they understood each other.
“Fine,” said the barman, disappointment spreading on his face. “I had to try, you understand? Don’t hold it against me, hah.”
He took a bottle and placed it under the bar and then tottered past them towards the dock, his steps small and shaky, as though his legs were about to collapse. When he reached the dock, he stood there and stared past the beach at the looming forest beyond and took a small bell and hammer from his jacket and struck the bell three times. Then he put the bell and hammer back in his jacket and returned to the bar to sit and partake in a glass of Beaune brandy.
“He’ll be coming,” said the barman, savoring the brandy with obvious relish.
“Like a dog to a dinner bell,” muttered the Thief.
The bartender heard his comment and gave him a look that the Thief didn’t like at all.
“Why don’t you go outside and meet him? The sight of your young flesh awakens longings that I must fight to suppress. So do me a favor and remove yourselves from the premises.”
“What’s the name of our guide?” asked Cassilda, lingering at the doorway.
“Peter,” said the barman. “Or Reginald. It will be one or the other.”
“Splendid,” said Cassilda, joining the others on the dock. “Does anyone else have the feeling that we are being taken advantage of?”
“The thought of that… thing touching me,” murmured Callimachus, shuddering. “What a dreadful place this is. Do you think that we are infected with that plague he spoke of? We should board the zeppelin and take our chances on the open seas.”
Something loped across the sand towards them, a short creature with an enormous head and long, ape-like arms. It stopped a distance away to observe, its enormous eyes blinking in the sunlight. It was clad in tattered rags, though it wore a necklace around its neck. As it warily approached, they could see that the necklace was made of small finger bones.
“Are you Peter?” asked Cassilda. It still stood about ten paces away.
“Reginald,” it responded, after a moment’s silence.
“Will you show us the way to the Underworld?”
“Peter will show you,” it said, waving a hand to bid them come.
“Who is Peter?” asked the sorceress.
“I am Peter. Who are you? And you? And you?”
He stared at Fergal for a second and then galloped on all fours to the company, stopping right before Fergal, his face inches away.
“You look familiar. Who was your grandmother?”
“Why… Francesca Dormoir,” replied the Aiv, baffled.
“A big lady. Liked to swing a stick very hard and crack it against one’s skull.”
“I don’t see how you could have possibly known my grandmother.”
“Cousins. The Fionnabhair branch.”
“The Fionnabhair branch? I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” said Fergal, his face reddening.
“Remember Stony? He liked to pick his toes in the Bon-Bon. Ate fish with a fig stick.”
“I assure you that have never known anyone with the name of ‘Stony’ who liked to pick his toes. I would not associate with such riff-raff,” replied Fergal, puffing up. “Frankly, sir, you are insulting me by implying such familiarity. I ask that you cease with your impossible narrative and guide us on our way.”
“Stony didn’t like you very much,” said Peter, who was at first Reginald. Fergal looked as though he was about to start screaming.
“Fergal, don’t argue with your long-lost cousin,” said the Thief. “It’s impolite.”
“Fabricating stories is impolite! We are a thousand miles at least from Mawlden Forest. How could I have a relation in the Shimmering Isles? No Huldufolk ever sailed the seas, not to my knowledge.”
“What do you know? What do you know?” asked Peter. He peered at Fergal with his enormous white eyes and wagged a finger at him.
“Why, I certainly know a great deal more than you, I’m sure!”
“You use names that you do not know the meaning of. You are lost inside your head. Foggy-brained, empty-eared. Sad-sack remnant of better times. What do you know of this country? It is older than you, far older. Little fat fleshy-thing. Follow on your legs and speak not unless bidden, or there will be no journey to the Underworld.”
No one said anything else for a while as Peter led them off the beach and into a dense forest. Fergal, who had only an hour or two before lamented the lack of a canopy over his head, felt uneasy in the woods. The trees were not healthy things; their bark was sloughing off and dark fungi stained the dead wood. The canopy was constructed not of thickly-foliated branches but of interwoven limbs locked together like arms entangled in a mob. The further they journeyed, the larger the trees became, until they were walking amongst petrified trunks as wide as six men. Fergal looked up and saw craggy branches stretching towards the sky, seeming to pierce the mottled clouds. Thickets grew between the massive trunks, dead tangles of brier and stunted saplings. A mist crept through the forest, sliding around the trees, shrouding the depths and preventing anyone from seeing ahead. There was no chirping of insects nor chatter of birds. The only sounds were their footsteps and the occasional snap heard deep within the forest.
“This wood is haunted,” said the Thief in a whisper to Cassilda.
“They hear us and walk beside us, yet we cannot see them, not anymore,” replied Peter. “Stay with me, stay on the path.”
They listened to him and continued until he bade them stop at a ruined archway halfway up a steep hill. The ruin was slowly falling off the hillside into a deep valley below, and though it offered little protection from the elements, Peter indicated that they should huddle down and rest for the night. Looking down into the valley, there seemed to be nothing below but thorns and pockets of mist, and Fergal felt even more uneasy settling against the ancient stones.
“Sleep you will under the holy protection of Alamas,” said their guide, pointing to a statue that they had mistaken initially for a stone. Cassilda summoned her firefly to illuminate the statue, revealing a slender figure, with doe eyes and elongated ears.
“Will she protect us against the ghosts?” asked Fergal.
The guide avoided his gaze, but a slight smile revealed jagged teeth.
“You do not believe in ghosts, do you?” asked Callimachus. “This country is strange, and this environ desolate, and your fear of the unknown exacerbates superstition. There are rational explanations for everything, keep in mind. Nothing is impossible to explain, not when one approaches the problem with a scientific mind. I, for one, would love to know if any botanist has ever seen the like of these titanic trees. They must be hundreds of years old to attain such lofty heights.”
The Thief gave Callimachus a look of disbelief.
“You sit here with a sorceress who just conjured light from nothingness. You witnessed the walking dead in Beaune, and you spoke with a talking corpse just hours ago. We sit in a forest haunted by ghosts, and all you can talk about is how we should put our faith in science. What good is science in the Shimmering Isles? How does science explain the Heart that beats against my chest?”
“You misunderstand me, Thief,” said Callimachus, leaning against stone and staring up at the treetops. “I’m not saying that I personally can explain all of those magical feats you mentioned. I’m saying that one day they will be explicable, because this a rational world we live in, one with clearly set rules that must be followed. Indeed, in the Republic there are people working on a theory of magic, though I’m sure they’ll have trouble getting through the state censors. Some in Vaalbara would prefer to believe that magic does not exist. But what we call magic is just another feature of Pannotia. People such as Cassilda can harness extradimensional energies. How that process works I cannot tell you. Perhaps it’s a genetic mutation that evolved through an unknown selective process. The study of genetics is in its infancy, but we will know more, and things once thought unknowable will become explicable, and the march of human progress will go on, with no foreseeable limit.”
“So you do not believe in forbidden knowledge,” said the Thief.
“I think that the brain is a marvelous organ capable of understanding almost anything. As a Capetian, perhaps you do not comprehend how far we’ve come. Only the wealthiest parts of your city have installed electrical generators. Firearms are not standard issue to your army, and most of your ships use sails rather than steam engines. In Vaalbara we have a railway system that takes us between states. Horseless carriages are a common sight in the capital. We can even speak to each other across vast distances using radio communicators. I have no doubt that we will surpass all these technologies as our understanding increases. One generation builds upon the next. You Capetians and Galvanians, mired in your Old World sorceries, will inevitably be left behind, and it will be left to us to bring you up to speed.”
“Hey, where’s Peter?” asked Cassilda.
“He was here just a moment before, I know because I can still smell his reek,” said Fergal.
“Well we can’t have him wandering off. I don’t trust him. I cannot read his mind, but I sense a certain amount of malevolence directed towards us, comparable to the sort of generalized contempt a cat feels for a mouse. I could put a tracking spell on him. The… ghosts or spirits or whatever they are would likely interfere with such magic, however.”
“I’ll find him,” said the Thief. “Fergal, come with me, you’re the only person I’ve ever met that’s nearly as quiet as I am. You ladies stay here. Witch, take this.”
The Thief took the Heart from his pocket and placed it in Cassilda’s hands.
“Why, Master Thief, are you beginning to trust me?” asked the sorceress.
“No. I just want you to feel guilty if something happens to us.”
Next Chapter: The Wizards Left Behind
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